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Big ideas and big balloons: Artist profile on Willy Chyr Up and away

“Artist” is a label that has taken some time for Willy Chyr to accept.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise — some three years ago Chyr (pronounced “cheer”) was in the circus, graduating from the University of Chicago’s physics and economics program, and on the verge of creating an award winning and taboo-breaking ad.

Willy Chyr says his art installations are always a surprise to him. He never fully maps out the final designs of his science-inspired twisted balloon designs, letting them grow organically during their construction. His largest yet is hanging above the escalators at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre's North Buildings during the Interior Design Show. (Jeff Green / Toronto Star)

That might give you a hint as to what inspired the balloon-twist fractal-like art installation hanging in the convention centre from the Toronto-raised, but Chicago-based, Chyr.

Created for the Interior Design Show, the neuron-like series of 1,600 twisted balloons hangs from fishing line above the escalators, playing with the light shining through a wall of windows as patrons enter the show’s main floor.

Early Thursday morning, Chyr, 25, is underneath the structure, describing how people would interact with his installation as they head to the second floor of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre’s north building.

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He was there with roughly a dozen volunteers until 2 a.m. the night before to finish the installation, but the dark circles under his eyes are hidden by his thick, black-rimmed glasses.

“In the past, I was modeling objects in nature. But now I’m looking at processes,” Chyr said, describing the organic development of his work.

“If you think of a seed growing into a tree, it doesn’t have the final shape of the tree, it just knows when there’s water, it’s going to grow upwards towards the light. . . That’s what I try to model with the work — in the process of creating itself as opposed to the final look.”

Chry’s path to becoming an artist was far from natural. While studying physics and economics, he joined the Chicago-based Le Vorris and Vox Circus with his sights set on becoming a juggler.

It was there where he learned to twist balloons (and that he would never be a juggler), and began to re-create biological models starting with jellyfish and moving onto to neurons.

Chyr also took an internship in 2010 at the Leo Burnett ad agency in Chicago, creating the first feminine hygiene ad to show a perfectly round red dot of blood trapped in a maze on a femine hygiene pad, rather than the usual blue dye — a break in taboo which won him an Addy Award the next year.

“I showed it to the Always creative director and she wasn’t a fan of it, but then someone showed it to the chief creative director. . . And he loved it,” Chyr said. “I didn’t get a job at the agency because of that, because I kind of pissed off everyone.”

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The ad was sold two days after he was shown the door.

“I left as an intern and became an award winning art director,” Chyr said.

He became frustrated with his work in 2011 — bored he knew what his installations would look like before he began.

So he turned to programming, creating digital art fractals, focusing on programming a set of rules for the process but letting the computer do the rest and “let it grow.”

A rejuvenated Chyr returned to twisting balloons focused on a more abstract and organic process, teaching volunteers how to create the structures and what rules to follow.

In 2012, he was featured in TIME magazinefor an online project called The Collabowriters, a novel written collectively on the Internet.

Later in the year, images of his balloon work were featured along side recording artist M.I.A.’s designs in a series of limited edition labels on Beck’s beer bottles. In the past, the bottles have also featured art from Yoko Ono and Andy Warhol.

As a truly multidiscipline artist, Chyr used to label himself a “creative,” a term he admits today is “doesn’t seem to mean too much to other people.”

He hasn’t taken an art class since Grade 8, but will be moving to Shanghai in March to be a resident artist for six months at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel.

His Toronto project will come with him — Chyr has taken to collecting the balloon remains and sealing them in a clear acrylic cube as part of his Morning After series. It will be all that remains of an installation that Chyr said was his largest structure to date and took two dozen volunteers more than four days to create.

“It’s a surprise to me, as well as the viewer,” Chyr said, describing the final product. “The installation always responds to the space.”

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